


Ready to Fall

by Tarlan



Category: Eureka
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-29
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 03:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one in Eureka recalls that Carl Carlson was not the only one in his lab when the artifact pulsed, flooding Carlson's lab with exotic particles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready to Fall

The force of the resulting blast from Carlson's exploding, spinning thing had thrown Jack into the wall and as he tried to stand he felt an all too familiar pain radiating through his chest. He had bruised ribs before, recalling a particularly nasty hunt where the fugitive had managed to backtrack, getting the drop on him and a deputy marshal. In the ensuing fight, he and the fugitive had slipped over the edge of the ridge and had tumbled, crashing past rocks and shrubs until Jack had fetched up against the base of a tree. The fugitive had fared worse on that occasion, breaking his neck in the fall and leaving Jack with only a slight concussion, cuts, bruises, and two bruised ribs.

Watching Carlson stand up and shake off the glass, dust and debris without any sign of pain, Jack knew that this time he had fared worse than the other guy. Yet he'd seen the force of the explosion throw Carlson through the glass observation window. It really wasn't fair, and it was even less fair when Stark came striding in with Allison not long after.

"Oh crap," he murmured, aware that he'd been avoiding her and her insistence on him taking a physical for three days now for this very reason.

He wasn't usually superstitious by nature but there were some patterns that a cop simply did not mess with, and one of those was taking out an insurance policy. After all, two deputy marshals getting killed less than a week after taking out insurance could be called a coincidence, but three made it a pattern. The U.S. Marshal's service usually foot the bill if he was injured in the line of duty, and since coming to Eureka, he hadn't experienced any serious injuries... until today. It couldn't be a coincidence.

Stark barely looked in his direction, too busy checking out all the damage to the expensive lab and its equipment. No doubt he saw Jack as easily replaceable compared to the machinery. Minutes later, it seemed Stark had seen Carlson as replaceable too, and Jack was given his first redaction to handle in Eureka.

The very next day, he died.

The force of the deflected gun blast had literally blown him off his feet but this time - unlike with the fifty foot fall from the suspension bridge - he'd been dead before his body hit the ground. Blown away like some rookie cop in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When Jack came round, feeling groggy and weird, Carl was leaning over him and even the ache from his busted ribs seemed to have lessened. What confused him though was his surroundings. The last thing he could remember was standing in the center of Main Street, bickering with Stark over Carl, and now he was in some metal corridor with Stark holding out a hand towards him, his green eyes filled with awe and yet intense with concern and relief too.

It was weird but, all these years later he could still feel the warmth of that hand and the strength of Stark's grip; he could remember the arm around his waist half-supporting, half-dragging him until he was grabbed by others and carried away. Though mostly, he could recall the strange pulsing sensation moving through his body, feeling it soaking into every cell to ignite him from the inside out.

He never lost that feeling.

Over the years that followed he never gained any of Carl's super-powers like special healing abilities, or became super-intelligent. He never really changed that much at all except for the continued pulsing sensation at the back of his mind, which ebbed and flowed according to the danger surrounding him. It was a part of him now, ignored for the most part, until Kevin ' _medicated_ ' him to accelerate his intelligence. When they reversed the effects, they all thought he'd become plain old Jack ' _I.Q. 111_ ' Carter again, and he was intelligent enough to hide the fact that the smart drug had broken down some mental barrier inside his head.

He knew what the pulse was now. It was the artifact.

Stark had believed it had died after it jumped to Kevin and was then removed by the teleportation device. Instead it had remained hidden inside of him for all these years - probably from the time of that first explosion in Carl Carlson laboratory rather than from the day after when Carl had used the energy of the artifact to heal Jack's fatal gun blast injuries. He knew this despite not truly registering the pulse inside until after that healing experience.

Jack's reasoning came in the form of a question he had asked of Henry all those years back, and one he had to ask again now.

"Hypothetically, if a man weighing 180 pounds falls fifty feet and lands on top of another man, what are his chances?"

He answered his own question. "Slim to none." 

Because Carlson wasn't one of those huge inflatable rescue air cushions that the fire service pumped up to catch jumpers - suicide or otherwise. Jack knew he should have cracked more than just the few already bruised ribs in that fall but at the time he'd been too far in shock to think about it, too exhausted from the second physical trauma in one day, and then too worried about Carl to think about his miraculous escape.

With an increase in intelligence from Kevin's smart drug, he saw the pattern that everyone else in this town had missed in the intervening years - that he'd suffered dozens of injuries that would have put any normal man out of action for weeks at a time, and yet he had healed quickly, back to his job within days instead of weeks. Maybe he didn't have Carl's super fast healing powers, but maybe that was because he wasn't using all of his brain, surviving on just a trickle from that pulse.

The problem was, the barrier was deteriorating now and the pulse inside him was growing in strength. He was starting to feel things, see things, and know things, though not with anywhere near the speed it had overtaken Carl. And one of the things he knew now was how to bring Nathan Stark back into the current time stream. All he had needed was a little more time, and with Grant's arrival in Eureka, having bought the town so he could fund the continued research, Jack now had that time.

What he didn't have was a valid excuse for spending his off-hours in the Time Maintenance laboratory, building a new interface that would capture the particles that made up Nathan Stark and bring him back from wherever - or rather whenever. At least not when he was supposed to be Jack Carter with an I.Q. of 111 rather than Jack Carter the Quantum Physicist.

In the weeks that followed he found his abilities growing, but as the Eurekans liked to remind him occasionally, Einstein had once said, _A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And so is a lot_. With his increased knowledge came other unwanted abilities, like the telepathy that Carl had exhibited towards the end. Jack was starting to hear thoughts and the worst were those coming from his wife.

He knew Allison loved him but he noticed how often she internally voiced her regrets whenever Grant was around. She was carrying Jack's child, and that should have made a difference especially as she had lost both of the previous fathers of her children before they were born. It was crazy but he could sense and hear her regretting their marriage, wishing they had stayed best friends but, fortunately, not regretting the new life she carried within her. Their child. Jack's son.

Surprisingly, her regrets had nothing to do with his intelligence, or seeming lack of it, or with the pregnancy hormones flooding through her. She simply didn't want to be tied down to one man, or possibly it was just marriage... and maybe Jack should have seen that before they married on impulse believing they were about to die. Maybe he should have recognized that her reluctance to set a date originally was because she was having doubts about them as husband and wife - or simply about her becoming a wife again. Allison had always been so strong and independent, and it occurred to Jack that he had been drawn to her for those very qualities, subconsciously seeing her as unobtainable and therefore... safe.

Nothing about their marriage was safe though. They argued about the things in each other that they had both seen as endearing before, and it was almost a relief to head off to the Time Maintenance room rather than sit with Allison some evenings. She never asked him where he went and he never offered up the information.

Eventually, the interface was ready.

As he stood in front of the console, Jack pondered on what would happen when he flipped this particular switch, thinking about all the strange disasters that had befallen Eureka over the years, all the many time resets that he now recalled with perfect clarity, aware that as part of the artifact, he was now also trans-dimensional, existing between all universes. He saw the paradox that Henry had created, and felt again the four years that led to Allison becoming his wife that first time around, recalling the heaviness of the baby waiting to be born. His son.

He saw the new paradox created when Grant came back with them from 1947, and yet another that had remained hidden to him until now, created by some other secret part of the US government. It had changed things so slightly yet added to the conflict that would eventually destroy this universe - just as the universe before this one had been destroyed by meddling with time.

Jack studied the panel, knowing that a simple press of a button would reset this universe back to a single timeline, setting time back on a straight course just as it was meant to be. Silently, he said goodbye once more to the life he had known over the past four years... and he said goodbye to the son he would not meet. At least, not yet.

Taking a breath, Jack pressed the button... and felt the world shift under him. He moved without conscious thought, seeing figures coalescing around him... Fargo and his alternate self. Jack moved into the space occupied by his own body, melting into the battered and broken Jack Carter who had barely survived all those time loops. He felt the energy of the artifact twisting through him, binding him cell by cell to that other Jack Carter, seeing again through the other Jack's eyes as time unraveled and Nathan Stark appeared one molecule at a time, speeding up as time flowed backwards until he heard the words, "See you around, Jack."

Pain flared briefly in Nathan's eyes as he set the clock to bring everything back into one time line. Jack's gaze was locked onto Nathan's, and for one infinitesimal moment in time, Jack shared all the secrets of the artifact with Nathan as the energy expanded within him... and then contracted rapidly.

Silence filled the laboratory as the machine powered down, broken only by the hiss of releasing gas as Nathan unsealed the time chamber and stepped out. In the background, Jack could hear Fargo yelling in excitement that they'd done it. They'd saved the universe. Jack cleared his throat.

"You have a wedding to get to, and I promised Allison you'd make it."

Nathan nodded slowly but Jack could see the changes in him that spoke of millennia rather than minutes outside of his own body, and he knew Nathan could see the changes in him too.

"Is it still there?"

Jack felt the tiny pulse deep in the back of his mind and took a moment to decide whether to speak the truth, but honesty won out. He nodded softly.

"Yeah."

"We saved the universe! Is what there?" Fargo asked, and Jack blinked rapidly because the world had shrunk to just him and Nathan, so he had forgotten Fargo was still with them. He was saved from answering by Nathan.

"My logic diamond."

Jack blinked again, wondering if that brief connection with Nathan had simply been his mind playing tricks on him after all.

"I need to go change... for the wedding," Jack stated even though he hurt all over, physically feeling the grind of broken ribs and the sting of cuts and bruises, and mentally, the pain of loss.

"There won't be a wedding," Nathan replied softly. "Not today."

****

Physically, Nathan felt no different now than he had when he had stepped into the time chamber to reverse the effects of Leo Weinbrenner's experiment, but mentally, he knew everything had changed. His brain was still trying to sift through the flood of information shared by the artifact through Jack. It was everything he had dreamed of knowing and yet Carlson's last words came back to haunt him.

_Will you be ready?_

Those words had confused him at the time. Ready for what? When would he NOT be ready to learn all the secrets of this universe and the one that came before? Except much of the information was quickly slipping from his grasp - just facts and figures with no substance, no connection, and about as useful as using baseball statistics from fifty years ago to predict this year's winner of the World Series. What was left was amazing and more intimate than Nathan could possibly have realized.

He was seeing the world around him through fresh eyes, and never more so than when he looked at Jack.

"There won't be a wedding," Nathan replied softly. "Not today."

And not with Allison even though he loved her. There was a reason why their first marriage had failed and he now realized that nothing had changed in that respect; and there was a reason why this second marriage would also fail, and that reason stood just a few feet away from Nathan, watching him intently.

There was an aura around everything - even Fargo - but it was more vibrant and alive around Jack. Even Jack's eyes were a more intense shade of blue, glowing from within with a vitality that Nathan knew had always been there even before the explosion in Carlson's lab. He wondered how he could have missed this about Jack, and then he knew with certainty that he hadn't missed a thing, he had simply denied it. He had been too wrapped up in an imaginary rivalry over Allison's affection to realize that it was Jack that made his heart race; Jack who challenged him and who filled his waking thoughts and dreams.

Nathan felt his head spin with a strange sense of vertigo. He felt as if he was standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down into an abyss, afraid to take that final step in case he fell into nothing, falling forever.

_Will you be ready?_

Taking in the battered figure standing before him, Nathan was assaulted by so many memories of them working side by side, sniping at each other, pushing each other to do better, touching, challenging, insulting... and hidden beneath it all under a shield of denial, caring. All the secrets of multiple universes came down to a single truth, that he was in love with Jack Carter.

"Fargo? Leave," he ordered, and heard Fargo scurry away, the door sliding shut behind him.

Nathan took a step towards Jack, and then another, bringing him within Jack's personal space and forcing Jack to look up slightly to keep eye contact. Jack didn't move, didn't give any sign of protest when Nathan reached out to cradle his face in his hands, but he saw Jack's blond eyelashes flutter as Nathan leaned in to kiss him.

He was falling now into the darkness, into the unknown, lost and alone until a pulse of energy stroked across his senses, feeling the firm lips yield and soften beneath his own. The darkness splintered with light, and he felt it again, felt the artifact flowing through his hands, through his mind, warming him to the core of his being.

By the time he drew back, the aura surrounding everything had dissipated and all Nathan could feel of the artifact was a remnant glowing deep inside Jack's mind, and reflected in his clear blue eyes. Nathan smiled and pulled Jack into another kiss, deep and searing, finally letting go of all the denial that had kept him from taking this first step.

He was ready.

END


End file.
